Waterfalls galore!

I just returned from a wonderful excursion to the beautiful Hocking Hills of southeastern Ohio. This region is a gem, and is richly endowed with stunning rock formations, streams, forests, and waterfalls.

For the better part of three days, Debbie DiCarlo and I led a photography workshop in which we visited some of the iconic Hocking Hills features - and some little known jewels. Debbie and I have a full slate of interesting workshops for 2018, and I invite you to check them out RIGHT HERE. We keep groups small, to ensure that everyone sees and shoots everything we find, and to better work with people on composition and technique. You can be assured we find lots of COOL THINGS, big and small.

We had planned this week's excursion long ago, and had given it the reasonable title of "Winter Wonderland", figuring that mid-February would bring ice and snow. While the Hocking Hills is gorgeous when clad in the frostings of winter, it also shines when wet. And wet is what we got. Temperatures were unseasonable, ranging from the 40's into the 70's. Lucky for us, the rains occurred largely at night and we dealt with little of the wet stuff when out shooting images.

Following are few quick edits of some shots that offer a glimpse into the grandeur of the Hocking Hills. Most of our participants had not seen these places, at least for a long time, and it was fun to share them and work with everyone to help them photographically capture their beauty.

As always, click the photo to enlarge

The lower falls at Old Man's Cave. I had never seen this falls looking so good, with a near perfect volume of water. And we had the place to ourselves, which is not often the case at this popular locale.

Majestic Ash Cave, one of the most impressive recess caves in the Hocking Hills. Walking into this place is akin to entering a mystical cathedral of rock - visually stunning, and great fun to try and capture with a camera.

The upper end of the gorge at Conkles Hollow. I had never seen it like this. There had been rain all the preceding night, which fortunately for us had faded to a drizzle by morning. Mother Nature had laid down enough water to send torrents gushing over the ledges and into the gorge. Normally there is just a trickle of water lazily cascading over these cliffs - nothing like the rushing flumes we found on this day.

A raging river appears to burst from the rocks at the upper end of the Conkles Hollow gorge. This water wonderland doesn't last long. I'd say one has only a few hours following a hard rain to see these high water flows. The watershed that feeds the hollow is small, and the water dissipates quickly.

A six-spotted fishing spider peers curiously at your narrator with its many eyes. This is one of the cool things we stumbled across, and nearly everyone overcame arachnophobia to practice macro work. On this foray, the spectacular waterfalls trumped nearly all else, though, and that's what we mostly focused on.